{"id":475,"date":"2009-12-09T21:39:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-10T01:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=475"},"modified":"2009-12-09T21:39:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-10T01:39:00","slug":"gawande-on-what-agricultural-reform-can-teach-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=475","title":{"rendered":"Gawande on what agricultural reform can teach us&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.newyorker.com\/reporting\/2009\/12\/14\/091214fa_fact_gawande?printable=true\">Testing, Testing by Atul Gawande<br \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>&#8220;America\u2019s agricultural crisis gave rise to deep national frustration. The inefficiency of farms meant low crop yields, high prices, limited choice, and uneven quality. The agricultural system was fragmented and disorganized, and ignored evidence showing how things could be done better. Shallow plowing, no crop rotation, inadequate seedbeds, and other habits sustained by lore and tradition resulted in poor production and soil exhaustion. And lack of co\u00f6rdination led to local shortages of many crops and overproduction of others. <\/p>\n<p>You might think that the invisible hand of market competition would have solved these problems, that the prospect of higher income from improved practices would have encouraged change. But laissez-faire had not worked. Farmers relied so much on human muscle because it was cheap and didn\u2019t require the long-term investment that animal power and machinery did. The fact that land, too, was cheap encouraged extensive, almost careless cultivation. When the soil became exhausted, farmers simply moved; most tracts of farmland were occupied for five years or less. Those who didn\u2019t move tended to be tenant farmers, who paid rent to their landlords in either cash or crops, which also discouraged long-term investment. And there was a deep-seated fear of risk and the uncertainties of change; many farmers dismissed new ideas as \u201cbook farming.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Another inciteful piece showing how far agriculture came in a few short decades by experimenting and scientifically evaluating methods for improvement and the parallels for us in this centuries health reform debate. How does he come up with these?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Testing, Testing by Atul Gawande &#8220;America\u2019s agricultural crisis gave rise to deep national frustration. The inefficiency of farms meant low crop yields, high prices, limited choice, and uneven quality. The &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=475\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Gawande on what agricultural reform can teach us&#8230;&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[110,108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-atul-gawande","category-health-care-reform-debate"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=475"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}